Reading for 2010

Back in January, I decided to keep track of my leisure reading for the year. I know I tend to read a lot, but I've never kept a record (which becomes awkward when I accidentally buy multiple copies of something, or my loot from the public library are things I've read before.) In any case, the damage for 2010 so far is pretty impressive, and I'm pleased that I've been able to read so many poets in addition to my usual bodiceripper and vampire fare:


Damaged by Alex Kava
High Windows: poems by Philip Larkin
Sestets: poems by Charles Wright
Bells in Winter; poems Czeslaw Milosz
Here, Bullet: Poems by Brian Turner
Bethlehem In Broad Daylight: Poems by Mark Doty
Slantwise: poems by Betty Adcock
Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006 by Ellen Bryant Voigt
Broken by Karin Slaughter
Jane Kenyon’s Collected Poems by Jane Kenyon
Captive Heart by Phoebe Corr
The Uncertain Certainty: Interviews, Essays and Notes on Poetry by Charles Simic
Gravity: Stories by Michael Davis
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
Life Makeovers: 52 Practical and Inspiring Ways to Improve Your Life One Week At A Time by Cheryl Richardson
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Find Your Strongest Life: What the happiest and most successful women do differently by Marcus Buckingham
I Wish I Had a Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman (poems) by Jude Nutter
Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays by Eula Bass
Push by Sapphire
Face (poems) by Sherman Alexie
Wormwood by Poppy Z. Brite
Bone Magic by Yasmine Galenorm
So Cold The River by Michael Koryata
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier
Under the Dome by Stephen King
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
Relentless by Dean Koontz
Sizzle by Julie Garwood
Cloud Watcher by Lilith Saintcrow
A Tale of Two Gardens: Poems from India 1952-1995 by Octavio Paz
The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney
The Last White Knight by Tami Hoag
The Scripture of the Golden Eternity by Jack Kerouac
Days We Are Given: Poems by Alice D’Alessio
Beyond the Highland Mist by Karen Marie Moning
Hidden Fire by Jo Davis
Under Fire by Jo Davis
Trial by Fire by Jo Davis
Door into the Dark: Poems by Seamus Heaney
Blaze of Memory by Nalini Singh
Branded by Fire by Nalini Singh
Hostage to Pleasure by Nalini Singh
The Demon's Librarian by Lilith Saintcrow
To Desire a Devil by Elizabeth Hoyt
To Beguile a Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt
To Seduce a Sinner by Elizabeth Hoyt
To Taste Temptation by Elizabeth Hoyt
Blinking with Fists: Poems by Billy Corgan
Angels' Blood by Nalini Singh
The Darkest Whisper by Gena Showalter
The Darkest Pleasure by Gena Showalter
The Darkest Kiss by Gena Showalter
The Darkest Night by Gena Showalter
Mine to Possess by Nalini Singh
Caressed by Ice by Nalini Singh
Visions of Heat by Nalini Singh
Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh
Nine Horses: Poems by Billy Collins
Must Love Hellhounds - Short stories
Storm Watcher by Lilith Saintcrow
Dark Watcher by Lilith Saintcrow

Gonesongs Reordered and Sent to Artistic Geniuses

I am happy to report that I have finished retyping the suggested reordering of Gonesongs. Peter Hammarberg and Christina D'Airo, the artistic geniuses who brought you the cover and inside art of God in my Throat, have graciously offered to read this manuscript and take a bunch of fabulous photos for me to choose from. I cannot wait to see what they come up with!

Protip: surround yourself with awesomely artistic and generous people early and often. Unless you are fabulous with visual arts in addition to words, you'll need the help. Desperately. And often, what they will bring to, or see in, the work will be vastly different - and likely more beautiful - than what you see yourself.

Considering the Power of Words and Silence

Ever since I learned to read and write, the power of words has thrilled me. It also to this day terrifies me how much power a handful of words from the right (or wrong) person at the right (or wrong) moment can hold so much power over your life. Think about it: the words you want to hear. The words you are loathe to hear.

Someone offers you a job. Someone tells you that you are fat. Someone tells you they think you are beautiful. Someone admires your work, or someone tells you to look for something in a different field. Someone reveals a secret. Someone tells a lie. Someone says I love you.

And, by extension of the power of words, the power of silence. Someone chooses to hold their tongue instead of gossip. Someone does not accuse you. Someone does not say I told you so. Someone chooses to remain silent instead of asking you to stay. You do not tell someone how important they are to you. You do not say how much you need a particular thing in order to be happy. You do not say I love you.

Even these things we do not say, they are word-forms, with as much power in the withholding as the giving of words.

And on this, we build our lives, and it is all sand and fog.

And they are, in the end, all just words. But what different directions they spin us in, what effects they have on the trajectory of our lives. How easily they can help us transcend ourselves...or crush us, as though our centers weren't made of bone at all.

On A Full Brain and a Furious Pen

Last night I reformatted and edited my MFA thesis and sent it out a peer reviewed journal (with a list of possible others if it doesnt get picked up there). I have 5 poetry projects in-progress (some farther along than others, and 6 if you count a book already contracted but not completed), and another two I want to start but have just been germinating in my brain without any ink (or pixels) spent on them yet. I also have a CNF essay collection in progress with two essays completed and sent out to various lit mags, and another twelve or fifteen ideas of additional essays. I have an idea for a collection of critical essays on a particular section of literature that I am interested in writing about.

I am co-editing two anthologies with Carol Smallwood on writing for women, Women and Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets and Women Writing on Today's American Family, and currently sending out the book proposal to publishers for those. I also have ideas for 2 more anthologies that I haven't even started crafting proposals or calls for contributors for, and I have been considering writing a collection of critical essays on an area of literature I'm very taken with.

And all of this outside my actual job, which I like very much and is at least as time consuming as my writing projects. But I am still grinning like an idiot about it all, even with the whirring brain, the random hits of ideas or lines that I have to grab a pen and mark on a random receipt before it flies away from me.

And so, because of all of this bouncing inside my skull, whenever I am not at work, sleeping or packing, I am writing (or thinking about writing). I was just thinking that it must be incredible to be able to do this as a full time job. I love librarianship, but if I hit the Lotto tomorrow...

Call for Contributors: Women Writing on Today’s American Family

Women Writing on Today’s American Family

Submissions are being sought for an anthology about writing and publishing by women with experience in writing and publishing about family. Possible subjects: using life experience; networking; unique issues women must overcome; formal education; queries and proposals; conference participation; self-publishing; teaching tips. Tips on writing about family: creative nonfiction, poetry, short stories, nonfiction, novels.

Practical, concise, how-to articles with bullets/headings have proven the most helpful to readers. Please avoid writing too much about “me” and concentrate on what will help the reader. No previously published, co-written, or simultaneously submitted material.

Foreword by Supriya Bhatnagar, Director of Publications, Editor of The Writer’s Chronicle, Association of Writers & Writing Programs, George Mason University.

Afterword by Dr. Amy Hudock, co-founder of Literary Mama, an on-line literary magazine chosen by Writers Digest as one of the 101 Best Web Sites for Writers.

Co-Editor Colleen S. Harris is a 2010 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her book of poetry, God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark Press, 2009), was a finalist for the Black Lawrence Book Award; These Terrible Sacraments, is forthcoming in 2011. Colleen has a MFA degree in writing and has appeared in The Louisville Review, Wisconsin Review, River Styx, and Adirondack Review, among others. She’s included in Library Journal; and Contemporary American Women: Our Defining Passages.

Co-Editor Carol Smallwood is a 2009 National Federation of State Poetry Societies award winner included in Who’s Who of American Women who has appeared in Michigan Feminist Studies, The Writer's Chronicle, The Detroit News. She's included in Best New Writing in Prose 2009. Her 23rd book is Writing and Publishing: The Librarian's Handbook (American Library Association, 2010). A chapter of newly published Lily’s Odyssey was short listed for the Eric Hoffer Prose Award.

Please send 3-4 possible topics you would like to contribute each described in a few sentences and a 65-75 word bio using the format like the bio’s above. Please send by May 24, 2010 using FAMILY/your last name on the subject line to smallwood@tm.net. You’ll receive a Go-Ahead and guidelines if your topics haven’t been taken. Contributors will be asked to contribute a total of 1900-2100 words. Those included in the anthology will receive a complimentary copy as compensation.

Call for Contributors: Women and Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets

Women and Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets

Contributors needed for articles about: time management, using life experience, women's magazines, critique groups, networking, blogs, unique issues women must overcome, lesbian and bisexual writing, formal education, queries and proposals, conference participation, judging poetry contests, feminist writing, self-publishing, teaching tips--just a few areas women poets are interested.

Practical, concise, how-to articles with bullets/headings have proven the most helpful. Please avoid writing too much about “me” and concentrate on what will most help the reader. No previously published, co-written, or simultaneously submitted material.

The Foreword is by Molly Peacock, the author of six books of poetry, including The Second Blush (W.W. Norton and Company, 2008).

Co-Editor Colleen S. Harris is a 2010 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her book of poetry, God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark Press, 2009), was a finalist for the Black Lawrence Book Award; These Terrible Sacraments, is forthcoming in 2011. Colleen has a MFA degree in writing and has appeared in The Louisville Review, Wisconsin Review, River Styx, and Adirondack Review, among others. She has been included in Library Journal; and Contemporary American Women: Our Defining Passages.

Co-Editor Carol Smallwood is a 2009 National Federation of State Poetry Societies award winner included in Who’s Who of American Women who has appeared in Michigan Feminist Studies, The Writer's Chronicle, The Detroit News. She's included in Best New Writing in Prose 2009. Her 23rd book is Writing and Publishing: The Librarian's Handbook (American Library Association, 2010). The first chapter of newly published Lily’s Odyssey was short listed for the Eric Hoffer Prose Award; a chapbook by Pudding House Publications.

Please send 3-4 topics you would like to contribute each described in a few sentences and a 65-75 word bio using the format like the bio’s above. Please send by May 24, 2010 using POETS/your last name on the subject line to smallwood@tm.net. You will receive a Go-Ahead with guidelines if your topics haven’t already been taken. Contributors will be asked to contribute a total of 1900-2100 words. Those included in the anthology will receive a complimentary copy as compensation.

These Terrible Sacraments and Gonesongs to be Published!!

My current writing projects include: a book chapter on managing the multigenerational library; a full-length book manuscript on low-cost professional development for librarians; a handful of academic journal articles on librarystuffs such as patron billing, matrix management, and a few others.

On the more creative side (as opposed to the non-fiction side), I have recently started writing a collection of poems dedicated to my younger brother, who while in the Marines served multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's a collection of war poems that weaves together bits and pieces of his experiences as he's shared them, pieces of my experience and that of my family as we lived through his deployments, and stories from other folks I know whose loved ones served in the military. I started it about two weeks ago, though the idea has been percolating for some time. I tentatively titled it These Terrible Sacraments.

Now, for the big news. In absolutely incredible, unbelievable, I-am-still-pinching-myself news, my poetry manuscript Gonesongs, which you may remember (if you read the blog) was also my MFA creative thesis, has been accepted for publication by Bellowing Ark Press.

In further maybe-I-should-play-the-Lotto news, I had mentioned my current project to my editor and sent the incomplete manuscript for him to see. To my complete amazement, he enjoyed These Terrible Sacraments so much that he wants to publish it as well! In fact, he'd prefer to publish it before Gonesongs, so you'll likely see it first.

I am floored for a number of reasons. First - two manuscript acceptance within less than a week of each other. For books of poetry. This does not happen in real life! Second - well, getting an incomplete manuscript picked up? never happen in a million years unless you're famous like Kay Ryan, Billy Collins or Molly Peacock. I bet they could pledge an unfinished book of poetry and someone would snatch them up. For it to happen to me - an unknown except to my friends and family - is a giant leap of faith on the part of the press. Third - that an editor would be as passionate about what I want to do with my work as I am is something that has really touched me. I intended this book as a gift for my brother - I never considered that it would be published-for-real given the political nature of writing about war. To have my publisher as committed to having people see this as I am is an incredible feeling.

The powers that be really overdid it with the generosity-stick beating over at Bellowing Ark. These will be my second and third books of poetry, and all will have come out of their press, courtesy of Robert Ward. I am so far beyond thrilled, it's like a new country. I will have to plant a flag. I will have to name it. perhaps later - right now I'm grinding on These Terrible Sacraments. I'll keep you updated with publishing schedules and artwork!

On the Importance of Ordering Your Poetry Manuscript

This is a topic I don't know that we discuss enough as poets. There are a bare handful of articles about it, but nothing truly substantial, likely because it's a personal and very dependent-on-the-content endeavor: ordering a poetry manuscript. Most fiction - and even non-fiction - that I've read moves through a sense of time in the narrative. Poets are not always so lucky, and our pieces don't always cohere to each other the way a novelist's chapters do.

It's not enough to have just written enough (and hopefully more than enough, so you can toss some) poems to fill a book (usually between 48-75 pages, for poetry books). You have to make sure they go together, that they're ordered in the most attractive fashion possible so that each poem's strengths are highlighted. Now, I'm not saying you have to write a themed collection, though those seem to be increasingly popular. I am talking about that ever-elusive, oh-so-ephemeral sense of flow.

An example. My manuscript Gonesongs has poems in it that I wrote 15 years ago (though I revised them some in light of the training in craft I've had since then), some were written shortly before turning the manuscript in as my creative thesis for my MFA. The poems range from remembrances of childhood and my parents, college days, love poems, grief poems - it runs the gamut of personal experience and family history for me. Jeanie Thompson, my last-semester mentor in the program, and I worked hard to find an ordering of the poems that suited. Because of the family and history arc through the poems, we essentially ordered it chronologically so that the poems tell the history. We wrestled over some placements that weren't obvious in the timeline, and after looking at the manuscript, some poems dropped out completely because they didn't "fit" - they were so wildly of the topics addressed in other poems, so structurally or imagistically different, or surrealist as opposed to the very realistic narrative of the bulk of the manuscript, that we dumped a few. *This* is why you have to have more poems than you need to start out with. You'll find a poem (or three, or seven) that you thought worked just doesn't once you look at the manuscript as a whole.

In any case, Jeanie and I wrestled the collection into an order, I was pleased with it, but after working so closely with a single manuscript for that long, I never really wanted to see Gonesongs again. I know some poets work on one project at a time, or even one poem at a time, for years - I need to have multiple manuscripts or series going at a time to keep me firing on all cylinders. So, after spending May through November on only that book...I was ready to put it away.

That isn't to say it's a meh manuscript - I think it's quite good, and there are a number of poems in it that have been picked up by high quality journals. My editor at Bellowing Ark seemed quite taken with it, and recently offered to publish it. He also mentioned he'd like to take some liberties with the ordering, and that he'd send his recommendations to me. And so here we are.

I just received his suggested re-ordering of the Gonesongs poems in the mail. It's like a completely different book (in a good way). I am utterly floored at how the same material in a different order can make such a huge difference! He utterly upset the chronological narrative ordering (much like, I admit, a novel would have moved) of the original, creating instead of my three part storyline a book in four parts where each part focuses on relationship and emotion instead. I don't know if it is the re-ordering or because I've been some months away from the book, but to me it seems to have more emotional depth this way. I have one or two recommendations I'll send back - minor swaps, moving a poem one or two paces to the left, not a whole 'nother re-ordering, but I am pleased.

Lesson #1: When your editor asks if he or she may take liberties with your work in the interest of making it the best it can be, let them. It's incredible what fresh eyes can bring to a piece, and remember: they want it to be the best book, too. It's in their interest to up the holy-crap-awesome factor. Remember this, don't be offended, and loosen your grip on the work. You don't have to sell out on important points or compromise your integrity, but you should take constructive criticism and recommendations from the good place they are given.

Lesson #2: Walk away a bit. hate your work? Tired of it, though you were passionate about it a week, two weeks, a month ago? Walk away. Replenish your energy. Work on something different, go to the beach and relax, read a book or seven. Come back to it later and read it anew with fresh eyes.

Lesson #3: Ordering is CRITICAL to the bang of your manuscript. Try it a few different ways. I know poetess Kathleen Driskell makes it a habit to rent a room, string twine, and actually hang the poems with clothespins as she contemplates order. If I can remove the dog from the area, I do mine strewn about the floor. Whatever works for you, but try it.

In the end, though, as much as your editor wants to help you make the work the best, it's your decision. if it's not something you'll be proud to have your name on forever and ever, you need to speak up. I will again recognize that I have been incredibly lucky that the universe matched me with a generous and sensitive editor.

This Poem Wants to be a Sonnet. Dammit.

While I was working on my MFA at Spalding University, when workshopping it became a running not-always-funny joke that when being workshopped by jeanie Thompson and/or Debra Kang Dean, if your poem was hitting a note but not as clearly as it could have, if it was a relatively shorter piece with a punch at the end, one of the Master Poetesses would murmur (or state very baldly):

"This poem wants to be a sonnet."

Imagine the nodding heads all around. Now imagine the screaming inner voice of the poet whose work is being discussed. Imagine the thoughts: "Oh my dear sweet flying spaghetti monster, a sonnet? Are you (very talented) bishes crazy? Shakespeare was a sonnetteer. Edna St. Vincent Millay. Elizabeth Barret Browning. Hopkins, Heaney, Peacock. But yea, though I love the saints of poetry and form, I fear the dreadful, work intensive, harsh mistress sonnet." Sprinkle a few more curses in there liberally, plus a whitening of the face, some weeping and gnashing of the teeth and a wish to drop into the floor, and that's about right.

The killer of it was, Jeanie and Debra were right. It took a few semesters, quite a bit of study, and the luck of having friendly, un-scary sonnetteer Molly Peacock as a workshop leader, but eventually I got a small sense for the sonnet. I rarely turn to form, and I am a clumsy sonnetteer for the most part, but it has helped me on occasion, and I've even had a few sonnets published in Sixty Six; The Journal of Sonnet Studies, which was a great surprise.

I am thinking about this tonight as I work on revising some poems I wrote with my brother in mind. He was recently honorable discharged from the US Marine Corps after multiple tours through Iraq and Afghanistan, and occasionally he drops tidbits of information or stories that I find fascinating and want to explore. And so These Terrible Sacraments was born. I intended for it to be a chapbook, and it's about 35 pages now. However, I keep thinking of new facets I want to explore, which may well end up giving me a full length manuscript. Of war poems, which I am quite sure will die a lonely death, since I imagine no one wants to read a themed collection on that. but I'm going to write it anyway, because it's been a hell of a ride so far.

In any case, These Terrible Sacraments is my attempt to understand war from through my brother's stories as well as from the perspective of those of us left behind - sisters, brothers, mothers, wives. My hope is that it neither glorifies nor demonizes war and those who fight it, but concentrates on the immense emotional undertaking war becomes.

It is this emotional turmoil in most of the pieces that is turning me toward form. I began the collection as a series of free form free verse pieces. As I've been revising them, some that had the momentum and friendly line breaks turned into tercets. Some of the slower more contemplative pieces have become poems in couplets. I have one or two where I think I see a villanelle poking through. But there are a number of poems, particularly the shorter - say, 13 to 18 lines - poems with a definite turn near the end, or well into the second half, that have been crying "sonnet" to me. At first it was a whisper-hint. Now it's more a cowbell-clanging.

My reaction was "this is going to suck and I will be cursing a lot." For me, sonnets require complete concentration, vigorous revision, and a ruthlessness towards the original that I rarely exercise. But the emotional content and the movement within the poem seems to call for it. And so, honoring what I've learned about my craft, and quashing my fear with the memory of merry Molly expounding upon her love for the form and it's many incarnations (intextations?), I will be hammering, cajoling, and begging sonnets to come forth from the freeform chaos of some current poems. It can be done, and as I've noted in the past, the effort is always worth it.

Honestly? It's daunting. But if I'm going to make this collection the best it can be so that I can be proud to present it to my brother, it needs must be done. *rolls up sleeves* Here, sonnet sonnet...

Gonesongs is a Go! and more....

In the most recent exciting news, my poetry manuscript Gonesongs (which was also my MFA thesis) has been accepted for publication by Bellowing Ark Press. I am absolutely thrilled that the editor liked this collection so much - it's one that is very close to my heart, and much more personal than God in my Throat in some ways, since it deals with love and family without the cushion (or armor) of working in persona. There's some work left to do with the ordering of it (I never did reach a place where I was completely thrilled with the structure of it), but my editor is, as he puts it, "taking liberties," and I'll get to take a peek at them shortly. I'm looking forward to it. Never underestimate the power of an editor with a passion for their work and an affection for yours.

In any case, Gonesongs will be tentatively scheduled for publication in early 2011. Until then, if you haven't ordered your copy of God in my Throat: The Lilith Poems, you should. That way you can compare them and tell me which you liked best while also supporting a small press!

New poems coming out in River Styx, Tipton Poetry Journal, Chaffey Review, Penguin Review, Red Wheelbarrow and Lamplighter Review. I've also got a piece that will be anthologized in Knocking at the Door, a poetry anthology forthcoming from Buddhapuss Ink sometime in August 2010.

A good haul for the November/December submission batch, I think. My next submissions likely won't be until mid to late May, when I've settled in after the move to Chattanooga.

I'm up to 52 books read so far for 2010 - a mix of paranormal romance, poetry, CNF essays, and more. I'm keeping track monthly on my other blog. I've also started what I had intended to be a chapbook of war poetry reflecting some of my brother's experience, which has blossomed into a larger project. I'm hoping to polish the collection titled These Terrible Sacraments in time to submit it to the Black Lawrence Press spring chapbook competition. And The Green of Breakable Things is out at various book contests and available for interested publishing parties.

Also, the sun has finally come out to bake me, and I am sporting my first merry sunburn of the season. Let's hear it for the rebirth of growing things, and for moving on to what we are meant to do.

Happy writing, all!